What Causes ASP.NET Application Restarts?

The ASP.Net runtime environment automatically restarts an application if any of the following scenarios occur:

• The maximum limit of dynamic compilations is reached
• The physical path of the Web Application has changed, or any directory under the Web application folder is renamed
• Changes occurred in the global.asax, machine.config, or web.config in the application root, or in the Bin directory or any of its sub directories
• Changes occurred in the code-access security policy file, if one exists
• Too many files are changed in one of the content directories (Typically, this happens if files are generated on the fly when requested)
• Changes occurred to setting that control the restart/shutdown of the ASP.NET worker process
• It is pragmatically restarted by calling HttpRuntime.UnloadAppDomain.